Sky confirms new deals

Sky has confirmed it has struck long-term rights renewals with UKTV, A+E Networks and NBCUniversal ensuring its customers continue to have access to content from these broadcasters, and has announced a $250million deal with HBO to produce high quality drama.

The deal with UKTV also paves the way for the arrival of UKTV’s on-demand service UKTV Play on Sky and Now TV this year, which will give Sky and Now TV subscribers access to on-demand and catch-up TV content from TV channels including Dave, Really and Drama.

The A+E Networks deal includes channels such as Lifetime and History, although more details were not released.

Earlier this year, Sky managed to secure a long-term deal with Discovery for its channels, following a very public battle over carriage rights.

Sky is also working with HBO in a new $250million deal to boost drama output. The focus of the arrangement will be on high end productions that feature engaging stories with international points of view and casting, with the first drama project from the two companies due to reach screens next year.

Meanwhile, as part of its latest results report, Sky announced increases of UK revenue of 4% to £6,410 million driven by customer growth of 338,000 over the last year and growth in transactional and programme and channel sales revenues.

Sky also confirmed that its premium pay TV service, Sky Q, is now in over 1 million customer homes.

Jeremy Darroch, Group Chief Executive, said:

“It’s been another strong quarter for Sky, despite this being our seasonally quietest period. We continue to perform well, attracting another 106,000 customers across the Group in the quarter, taking growth to 769,000 over the last 12 months. We have delivered strong revenue growth of 11% and are on track financially with operating profit for the nine months exceeding £1 billion.

“We’ve made good progress on the growth plans that we laid out. We launched Sky Mobile to create a substantial new source of revenue and profits. We have continued to improve the customer experience with further enhancements to our Sky Q and Sky+ platforms as well as the launch of our digital customer service via the My Sky app.

We have concluded a number oflong term rights renewals and are announcing today a major new multi-year co-production deal with HBO, as well as a ground breaking virtual reality experience in partnership with Sir David Attenborough and the Natural History Museum. “Looking forward, we enter the final quarter of our fiscal year in good shape. Despite the broader consumer environment remaining uncertain, we continue to deliver on our strategy and are on track for the full year.”